


You're On My Heart

by DGCatAniSiri



Category: Being Human (US/Canada)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-23
Updated: 2014-06-23
Packaged: 2018-02-05 23:07:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1835533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DGCatAniSiri/pseuds/DGCatAniSiri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aidan and Josh have a thing going on. It's good. They enjoy it. Maybe they enjoy it more than they admit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You're On My Heart

_Love is one of the most powerful emotions. Humans are always looking to find it, and the monsters want to feel it again. It’s why the man at the bar keeps coming back after being turned down by every woman there, why the vampire families exist, why wolves form a pack. To be loved is to be open to things greater than ourselves. It also opens us up to great pain, and things far lower than ourselves. To love is to be willing to trust someone to such an extent that you are perhaps blinded to the greater difficulties. They will either bind you closer or tear you apart._

When Aidan had first met Josh, he’d thought the werewolf was an awkward dork who needed someone to watch out for him in the world of everything that horror movies were made for or he’d wind up a John Doe in some backwater morgue after a group of vamps had had their way with him or some equally horrible possibility.

He hadn’t expected that he and Josh would start sharing a bed.

It should have been doomed to failure. Aidan was a vampire, Josh was a werewolf. Aidan was cool, calm, and collected, Josh was socially inept and awkward. Aidan was dead and immortal, Josh had a life expectancy. 

But...

Here they were, naked in bed, and far from the first time. It had started as drunken fumbling on Josh’s part and simple need on Aidan’s. It had progressed to ‘just until a girl comes along,’ and then to ‘this is kinda nice, I don’t see why we should give it up.’ Aidan occasionally wondered if it was going to or if it already had gone further than that, but they didn’t discuss it. It had just become routine for them to go about their days as before and spend the nights that Josh wasn’t a hairy beast together in bed.

Being a vampire, Aidan didn’t need sleep the way that Josh did. He still did it, but these days, it was more for Josh than for anything else. And, though he wouldn’t admit it out loud, he’d come to like waking up with Josh curled up next to him, feeling his gentle breath on his body as his living lover still slept. 

Anticipating that in the morning was why he’d nearly fallen asleep when he felt Josh gently tracing the tattoo of Celine’s name on his chest. The touch of Josh’s fingertips brought a not-fully involuntary smile to his lips. He opened his eyes to see Josh’s earnest puppy dog eyes (it was true, despite how Josh didn’t appreciate the term ‘puppy dog’ as a description of him) staring at the tattoo.

“You really loved her, didn’t you?” Josh’s voice was soft.

Aidan looked into his lover’s eyes and saw a number of emotions swirling in them. That was the biggest double-edged sword about the man. He wore his heart on his sleeve and couldn’t hide what he was feeling. It just wasn’t who he was. Aidan could see fear and love and concern and about a dozen other emotions staring back at him. 

“I mean, you’d have to, if you got her name tattooed on your chest, a permanent mark like that...”

“She did mean a lot to me. She was the first person I loved after being turned.” Celine would always be important to him... But Josh... Josh could easily become just as important. “I got this to remind myself why I was going to be different, why I wouldn’t feed on humans... Because of her. She wanted to remain human, even after I told her what I am, what I could offer her, but... she still loved me.” 

Josh looked down, still tracing the name on Aidan’s chest. “Am...” He swallowed down the question and tried again. “Do you think that anyone else could ever mean as much to you as she did?” 

There it was. If the thought had occurred to Josh that they were getting deeper than just ‘sharing a bed with someone is better than being alone,’ then it definitely had become that way. At least, they were on Josh’s end. Aidan... he had two hundred and fifty years of baggage to go through to be able to figure it out. The man in his arms... He could become as close as Celine. Perhaps closer. Perhaps he had. But could he bring himself to admit it? Others, vampires like Bishop, werewolves like Ray... they’d never let them have a moment’s peace because of it. Aidan could handle it, take care of himself, deal with all the crap either by facing it head on or just finding a quiet corner and avoiding it all and waiting for those involved to die off, but Josh... He could be torn apart by either group unless it was the right time of month. It wasn’t his nature. Neither was becoming a hermit. Neurotic as he could be, Josh was still a people person. He would be even if he didn’t go all canine every month.

Aidan knew that if he stayed silent, Josh would take it as a silent admission. So he had to give an answer. “I don’t know,” he said, which was a small white lie, since he was wondering himself if he could do the same with Josh. “I could easily live forever. It’d mean that I’d eventually have to watch them grow old and die. I don’t know if I could take that happening over and over again.” Which was true enough. It was the consequence of being a vampire, why most vampires grouped together in families – at least then they could face forever together. Even when you hated one another, at least you could expect them to be there a hundred years down the line. When you were immortal, you grew to love even the people you hated. 

He certainly didn’t hate Josh. Love... Love was a harder emotion to pin down. Rather than focus on that weighty task right now, however, Aidan found himself pulling Josh into a kiss, something that normally helped to calm him down and let him relax and fall asleep. It seemed to do the trick, as Josh softly moaned into the kiss and when Aidan released him from it, gave him a small smile and laid his head down to sleep, his breath quickly falling into the regular steady pattern. Now the question was whether or not Aidan loved Josh. That one would be with him all night. It was a good thing that he didn’t need the sleep.

***

It wasn’t that he needed to hear Aidan say that he loved him. God, no, after all, they were only doing what they did because the women in their lives were Sally, who was a ghost and very much unable to be interacted with in any physical sense, Nora, the nurse who had admittedly flirted with Josh, but was completely out of his league, and Rebecca the vampire, who had completely flipped her lid and was so far beyond the realm of sanity, so they were just... taking advantage of the only other available body in their everyday lives. 

Yeah, that didn’t sound flimsy at all. Care to try it again, Josh?

It was hard to admit even in his own thoughts, but the more he mulled it over, the more difficult it got for Josh to say his denials held up. It was hopeless, impossible to stop feeling. He was in love with Aidan, or at least falling for him hard and fast. 

The problem always came down to how Aidan was a vampire, functionally immortal, and... if he was even capable of loving someone. With that immortality came a tendency to isolate themselves from someone who had an expiration date guaranteed. Aidan had been somewhat standoffish and isolated back when they’d first met, though he’d thawed over time. Josh had noticed how he’d bonded with Sally fairly quickly, which had made sense. She was a ghost, likely to be there for a longer time than Josh. And the thought of that still sent a little pang of... what was it, hurt, disappointment, even something like pleasure at the thought that Aidan wouldn’t be alone forever, that he wouldn’t spend eternity by himself?

All Josh wanted to know right now was if there was even a chance of Aidan and he becoming something permanent, a... thing that... Well, he probably wouldn’t take Aidan home with him. That dinner with him being just his roommate had been awkward, since he knew that his parents probably had suspected that there was something going on between him and Aidan, but, like all parents, they had a knack for suspecting something while still hoping that they were wrong and not taking the time from suspicion to confirmation coming to terms with it. Which meant that if he came home and said, ‘Hi, Mom, Dad, this is my vampire boyfriend, Aidan,’ they would likely focus on ‘boyfriend’ long before ‘vampire.’

And the fact that he was thinking of Aidan in terms of ‘guy to take home to meet the parents’ was probably the nail in the coffin as far as his denial was concerned.

His neurotic tendencies beat on his mind all through the day and all the way home. He spent half an hour talking to Sally as she tried to lift a glass before she finally yelled at him to leave and let her concentrate, and he retreated to his room.

It was an hour after that, an hour spent mentally arguing with himself about how much of a future there even was in the simple idea of a relationship with Aidan, when there was a knock on his door. Since there was only one other person in the house who could actually knock, Josh knew who it was. 

The door opened and Aidan was standing there, just as expected. What hadn’t been expected was the way that he was looking at Josh. “Aidan?” he asked, his voice quivering in nervousness.

Aidan shushed him and entered the room, gently shutting the door behind him. “Last night got me thinking.”

Last night. Right. How Josh had completely not been subtle in trying to get Aidan to tell him whether or not he had feelings for him. How he’d been poking and prodding, attempting to get an answer without asking the question. How he’d all but admitted that he was feeling himself falling for Aidan, and wanted to know if Aidan was anywhere near feeling the same way. 

Awkwardly, Josh cleared his throat. “Th-thinking about what?”

“About us. About how you wanted to know if anyone could ever mean as much to me as Celine did.”

All of this complicated head-swirling stuff started with a few words that just had to come tumbling out. “Look, Aidan, I shouldn’t have asked you about that. I... I don’t know why I did-” Aidan’s hands were suddenly around his waist and Aidan’s lips were pressed against his. For a brief second, Josh fumbled and almost flailed in surprise. But, once he realized just what he was doing, he returned it, his arms mirroring Aidan’s.

“You did it for the same reason I want to give you an answer now. You mean as much to me as Celine did. Maybe more. You’ve helped to connect me to the world, in a way that I’d forgotten about until I met you. I treasure what I’ve found with you in a way that... I never thought that I ever would again after... everything.” Aidan said it gently, reverently, in a way that made Josh feel for certain that Aidan meant every word. 

So this time, Josh met Aidan’s lips, surprising the both of them with the ferocity of it. He hadn’t realized just how much he’d wanted Aidan to say that he wanted to be with Josh, to spend however long they would have together as lovers, until he’d said it. 

“Aidan...” he gasped out. 

“Wait.” He reached up and rested a hand on Josh’s cheek. “There’s one more thing.” He stepped back and pulled off his shirt. Josh’s eye was drawn to the red spot over his right pectoral, and saw in calligraphy his name. It was a mirror to the one of Celine on his left. 

Josh didn’t have the words to express how he felt. He trusted that for the night, his actions were going to be enough to make sure that Aidan understood.


End file.
